Resources and Energy

ip journal

The new Saudi strategy shakes Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, but they are not its real targets

Since July 2014 the price of oil has been falling, and a new OPEC strategy pushed through by Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi makes a reversal unlikely in the near future. OPEC felt obliged to defend its market share against US fracking firms and other “marginal producers.” The pain felt in Moscow, Tehran, and Caracas is an unintended – if not unwelcome – byproduct.

ip journal

Stress-testing a Russian gas cutoff, the EU may be too optimistic

With the actions of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin becoming ever more unpredictable, the EU Energy Stress Test was an important step to prepare for the contingency of a supply stop of Russian gas to Europe. Relying on solidarity and LNG imports, however, may not be enough.

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The EU did more than just about anyone else at the recent UN climate summit in Doha to make progress on an array of issues that could slow global warming. But this praise is consciously faint. The meager steps forward in Qatar – like the formulation of a successor treaty to Kyoto – won’t keep global temperatures from rising less than 2 degrees in coming decades or coastal states from being swallowed up by the Pacific.

The EU plans to modernize its public power supply, to create an integrated energy infrastructure, and to take the leap into the era of renewable energy. Is Europe on the right track? And what is Germany’s role? Here are three questions for the Federal Minister for the Environment Peter Altmaier and European Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger.

As traditional security policy is superseded by economic and energy interests, we must begin to discuss the “economization of security policy” – the implications of which go far beyond the current global financial crisis and its effects on the security policy of the West. One voice inside NATO describes what needs to be done to ensure that this commercialization of security will still allow the friendly member countries of NATO and the EU to avoid 21st century conflicts and to continue to act collectively.

Germany’s offshore wind power is one of the missing links in the Energiewende. The German government wants to see a ginormous 25,000 megawatts of offshore wind parks installed in the Baltic and North Seas—the equivalent of 20 large nuclear power reactors. Yet there are only two wind parks in commercial operation, and one of them operates at just a fifth of capacity.

We have to talk about prices one more time. It’s all over the media that Germany’s transition to renewables is killing—or going to kill German industry. How can Germany compete abroad when it pays so much for its energy? It’s all a consequence of the Energiewende! This is a lot of rubbish.

Because of the decision to get rid of nuclear power following Japan's Fukushima disaster, Germany has had to rely more and more on burning coal as a backup for its renewable energy sources. But this choice is slowing down progress on lowering German carbon emissions.

The volume of electricity produced from renewable sources of energy in Germany is burgeoning, which is good news—except that the country's present transmission grids haven't kept up with renewable energy production. Right now, capacity is no where near adequate for Germany's goals of where it wants to be with renewables in 10 or 15 years time.

Germany's new environment minister has recently laid out a 10 point plan for the energy transition that potentially holds a lot of promise. But his wish to revamp the country's Renewable Energy Law to please some of the government's neo-liberals could put a lot of environmental progress in jeopardy.

Tiny Feldheim and urbane Freiburg have little in common other than that they're two of Germany's, and perhaps the world's, best models for the transition to green energy. The two towns prove that what counts when it comes to going renewable is commitment and ingenuity, not size.

Record volumes of renewable energy production in Germany have just been posted. At the same time, the country still has a conservation challenge. Power consumption may have declined a small amount, but it didn’t come from efficiency and conservation measures.

There’s no one, set-in-stone blueprint for Germany’s energy transition. A lot of it will be made up along the way and plans will change as we learn more. One of the Energiewende’s pillars, for example, namely bioenergy, has just been subjected to a blistering critique by Germany’s foremost scientists.

Bavaria's success at promoting solar power has become so renowned, that the German state is getting a green reputation to add to its Oktoberfest fame. That's because investing in solar panels has become a smart financial move for property owners.

It’s high time to say something about the raging debate over the high and rising electricity prices in Germany. Almost unanimously they’re being blamed on the Energiewende, and are being employed by opponents to stop or at least slow down the energy transition. It is not fair.